


Teen Wolf, Season 2, Episode 6, Frenemy

by TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Analysis, Episode Review, Episode: s02e06 Frenemy, Meta, Nonfiction, Season/Series 02, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 15:04:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16177550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer/pseuds/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer
Summary: Warning: Contains spoilers for the episode and the rest of the series. Complete.





	Teen Wolf, Season 2, Episode 6, Frenemy

**Author's Note:**

> This was posted after Venomous. I don't know why it appears as if it were posted first.

Open to the tape revealing Jackson turning into the kanima.

There’s a transition to Danny sending Jackson a text/email telling him the video has been restored. He claims he didn’t watch it, and I don’t buy this.

I’m wondering why exactly he never said anything.

Then, he puts his tablet in his trunk.

Why wouldn’t he just put it in the passenger seat, floorboard, or glove compartment? If this were a different sort of car, I guess I could understand him putting it there if he wanted to make sure no one saw it, but this is more along the lines of an SUV. It doesn’t even have a sun covering he could pull across. Anyone who looked through the windows could see it.

There’s a short scene of Derek chasing K-Jackson.

Meanwhile, Allison drops Lydia off at home, and I don’t buy this scene. Instead of making sure Lydia’s okay and, then, saying something along the lines of, ‘My family hates Scott for reasons I can’t really explain, but he and I have gotten back together and are going to keep dating. Can I count on you to not say anything that could get back to them?’, she gives this big speech about being in love.

This is more something Scott would do than Allison. I do believe Allison loved Scott, and I do believe she viewed herself as in love at this point in time. I just don’t buy she’d be so focused on her relationship on him at this moment.

Back to Derek, he’s now fighting K-Jackson. Stiles and Scott try to get to him in the jeep, but spiky roadblocks stop Stiles from driving. Scott leaves on foot.

Chris shows up to shoot K-Jackson, but K-Jackson quickly heals. Scott saves a nonchalant Gerard from K-Jackson.

Oh, c’mon, Scott. Why’d you have to do that? You’ll let Deucalion manipulate things so that two kids who were experimented on against their will end up killed, but you can’t let a man who stabbed a knife in you, cut a trapped man in half, has specifically said he wants to kill you and everyone like you, and has declared he'd kill your human mother, someone who is supposed to be granted top priority protection by his family's code, if you try fighting back be killed?

If Scott had an objection on the grounds of he doesn’t want another person’s blood on Jackson’s hands for Jackson’s sake, it would be one thing, but this isn’t in play here at all, and Scott’s no-kill rule in later seasons in largely posturing. I believe there are some people he’d risk his life for, but on the whole, he isn’t as big on saving lives as he wants people to believe.

Later, Scott and Stiles have followed K-Jackson to a club, and it’s revealed K-Jackson doesn’t have a scent. Scott doesn’t appreciate Stiles’s sarcasm, and then, he smells Danny’s aftershave.

Inside, Scott realises they’re in a gay club, and surrounded by drag queens, Stiles openly calls Scott a werewolf.

At the bar, Danny sees his ex-boyfriend dancing with someone else. The impression he’s doing so to be deliberately passive-aggressive is given. The sympathetic bartender directs Danny to dance with a shirtless boy who is giving him (Danny) an appreciative look.

Awesomely, the background music is a song called Danny Boy.

However, even before I got into meta, this struck me as an interesting choice when the lyrics are looked at. Was the song chosen simply because of the title, or is there’s a deeper meaning to it? The Danny in the song has done something wrong. He’s let someone down. The line, “I’m not your circus,” could be a reference to K-Jackson. Alternately, it could be a subtle way of saying the insinuations the ex-boyfriend did Danny wrong isn’t as true as the audience has been led to believe.

The duo comes to order beers, and when asked for their licenses, they give the bartender what I think are their actual licenses. Regardless of whether they’re lacklustre fake I.D.s or their real ones, the bartender says he’ll get them some cokes.

The bartender leaves, and another server comes to give Scott a drink. He tells him it’s been paid for. A nearby patron raises his drink. Scott’s subtly proud and preening, and forgetting all the attention he had earlier, Stiles snaps, “Oh, shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, well, your face did.”

This scene is another perfect example of the show passing its goal of showing a sexually progressive universe without being unrealistic. It shows the rare people in the real world and presents them as the majority.

Two obstinately straight boys end up in a gay club, and one of them immediately makes friends with some drag queens. Treating them as people, he enjoys their company. The other one is bought a drink from another boy who finds him attractive, and it doesn’t matter he’s heterosexual and has a girlfriend, he’s still flattered someone found him attractive. His friend, likewise, is mildly jealous no one finds him attractive enough to buy him a drink, but otherwise, he couldn’t care less another boy just hit on his friend.

There are teenage boys like this in the real world. However, the number of sexist, homophobic, racist, and just plain mean and/or wilfully ignorant people in the real world is much more prominent in terms of both numbers and visibility.

At Lydia’s house, she takes her dog, Prada, out. There’s water nearby, but in a sweet moment, she kisses Prada. “I love you.” Aw.

Prada goes to do his business, and taking a turn into the not-sweet, Junior soon appears with Prada in his arms.

Meanwhile, the duo spot Danny and K-Jackson respectively. The latter is hanging out on the ceiling. Before they can get to Danny, K-Jackson paralyses him and several others. Appearing, Derek slashes K-Jackson, but it does little good.

Back at Lydia’s, she annoys me when she trivialises the struggle of those who self-harm and require psychiatric medication in order to function by implying they do it solely for attention. She and Junior flirt, he tries to kiss her, and when she refuses, he asks to hold her hand. When she refuses this, he gives her a flower. Asking her to keep it, he says he’ll be hurt if she doesn’t.

At the club, police and medics have arrived. Scott asks if Danny is okay, and upon being told his ex is also paralysed, Danny announces he’s great.

Jackson is in the backseat of Roscoe, and Stiles worries about one of his dad’s deputies seeing him. He wonders if anything else could go wrong, and Jackson starts to come back to consciousness. “That was rhetorical,” he angrily yells. Heh.

Getting out, he talks to his dad, and Scott ends up punching Jackson to keep him unconscious. During the conversation, Stiles starts to imply he might like boys, and once I read about it, I realised how Sheriff S’s line of, “Not dressed like that you’re not,” could come across.

However, my mind automatically went to him referring to the fact Stiles isn’t dressed to impress others or even really for a night of partying.

Eventually, Stiles doles out a decent lie he should have opened with: He and Scott were hanging out with Danny due to Danny being mildly depressed over his breakup.

Since Sheriff S wants to believe this, he expresses his pride in his son for being a good friend.

The duo leaves with kidnapped Jackson in the back.

Meanwhile, Chris gets into a car with Gerard. Gerard is dismissive of Chris’s questions on why Gerard was so calm with the kanima near him. They talk about Derek’s reappearance, and mentioning Isaac is a potentially exploitable connection to Derek, Gerard says the best way to take care of a problem is have someone handle it for him.

Elsewhere, the duo are debating where to take Jackson. Stiles gets an idea, and Scott asks if it involves law-breaking. Stiles points this is pretty much a given at this point.

The next scene has Jackson handcuffed inside of a police van.

Coming in, Stiles tries to reason with Jackson. Jackson points out his parents will be looking for him, and Stiles shows him a text he sent from Jackson’s phone.

There’s a neat transition to Mr Whittemore showing the text to Sheriff S.

Now, some parents, they’d be worried if they didn’t have verbal contact with their kid, because, as shown, anyone with the kid’s phone can send a text. The Whittemore’s, however, aren’t concerned about the form of communication so much as what it says.

Stiles and his dad tell one another they love each other. To him, it’d be a red flag not to type in those words.

To the Whittemore’s, they haven’t heard those words from their son since he was a young child. Mr Jackson claims they’re close, but really, it’s more of them doing everything they can to make him happy, knowing deep down they’re not succeeding, and desperately yearning for their son’s love. In return, he works hard to be a good son and pretends he’s content.

Here, Stiles just sent the message it’s good he never fully shows or accepts love to and from his parents. It protects him. If he could say he loved them, his parents wouldn’t know they needed to be looking for him. Of course, he misses the fact, if he did let them help him with all the things wrong, he might not even be in this situation in the first place.

At school, Gerard is creepily interrogating Allison. When she leaves, she notices cameras are being installed, and then, in her class with Scott, they discover Victoria is the substitute. Also, Scott is wearing stripes, and I’m not sure what corrupting influence or actual possession he could be under.

In the van, Stiles is explaining about K-Jackson, and Jackson is sceptical.

After class, Victoria asks Allison about all her calls to “the odd one,” a.k.a. Stiles.

The abuse Allison is being subjected to isn’t funny, but this line is.

Allison claims she’s using him to help keep an eye on Lydia.

I’m calling this scene with Victoria accurate. She tries to be sympathetic to her daughter’s feelings towards Scott, but she shows exactly where Allison gets her internalised misogyny from when she goes on about how shallow and weak the other girls are with their skewed up priorities.

There is nothing wrong with femininity. Some girls/women don’t care for makeup, dresses, etc. Some do. As long as everyone is respectful and reasonably accommodating to the others, neither is more right nor wrong.

Thankfully, Allison is slowly learning. She asks if she can’t still be strong and enjoy going to a dance. Victoria agrees, as long as it’s not with Scott, Allison can go to prom. Then, turning on the emotional manipulation, she says, as long as Allison stays strong, they won’t _have_ to kill a sixteen-year-old boy.

Victoria is often hard and cold, and she does show cruelty towards her daughter, but she doesn’t bark when an almost tearful Allison gives non-verbal agreement or do things such as cut herself with a large knife just because she found a non-signed note in Allison’s bedroom.

At the van, Allison lets Stiles know the Whittemore’s have been talking to the police. He realises the GPS on Jackson’s phone could be used, and this is confirmed when he turns on the police radio. Instructions for units to go to their current location are given.

Ditching the phone, he drives off.

Meanwhile, Scott is talking to Danny at the hospital. He bribes Danny with the promise of helping him get his fake I.D. back if Danny will tell him what was on the tape of Jackson’s.

When Scott leaves, he runs into Melissa, and her scrubs are different from last time. His failing grades are brought up, promising he’s going to do better, he leaves.

At Danny’s car, he finds it tablet-free.

So, Matt sent K-Jackson as a way of retrieving the tablet before anyone Jackson could see it, right? Either he planned to cause a distraction where Danny was so that he could break into the car, or he planned to have Danny hurt/killed so that he could steal it when Danny was out-of-commission.

If Danny is working with Matt, did he know about and agree to this plan?

From the van, Jackson uses super-hearing to listen to the trio talking. They discuss someone protecting K-Jackson, and the fact he’s only supposed to go after murderers is brought up. It’s posited K-Jackson kept Derek and Stiles in the pool for a reason.

Stiles isn’t sympathetic towards Jackson’s issues, and Jackson silently cries.

Haynes does wonderful here, and I’m a little more sympathetic than Stiles is, but this scene doesn’t do much for me.

He starts to turn into the kanima.

Later during the night, in a car, Allison and Scott talk about the Argent’s control of the town, and she comforts him about his grades.

There’s a shot showing Jackson is still changing.

Back in the car, Allison and Scott talk about their future together, and when they move things to the backseat, Jackson escapes.

Now was definitely not the time, you two.

Later, Stiles wakes them up to alert them to this fact. Allison insists she needs to tell Chris to prevent K-Jackson from killing more people, and they reluctantly agree. Stiles says he has to tell his father, too.

Scott promises to help him.

In Allison’s room, she finds Lydia sitting in the dark.

Lydia’s tone is creepy when she says, “I’ve been sitting here for an hour waiting for you.”

This scene is odd. Unless Lydia broke in, one of the adults had to have let her in. Yet, none of them told Allison when she came home? None of them tried to talk Lydia? None of them realised she was siting in Allison’s room with the lights turned out?

Allison dismissively complains about some of her problems, and hoping it’ll get her best friend to stop being weird and actually talk to her, Lydia volunteers to translate the archaic Latin.

At the station, it’s shown security was tightened after Shape Shifted by the duo being buzzed in.

Then, on Sheriff S’s office, they find Jackson sitting with a police jacket on. Sheriff S introduces them to Mr Whittemore, and Jackson supplies the fact his father is a lawyer.

Back at Allison’s, Lydia explains the kanima seeks a master, not a friend, and Allison realises someone is controlling rather than protecting Jackson.

Fin.


End file.
